The short video below, created by Erik Righetti & Device, animates a portion of synthesist and sound designer Richard Devine‘s speech at Sónar 2019. For those who don’t know about Richard he’s an Electronic Artist and Sound Designer specializing in Musical composition, sonic mnemonics, field recording, sound effects, and sound design specific for TV, Film, web media, virtual reality, and video games.

As a producer, he has released six albums and has made several remixes for artists like Aphex Twin, Matthew Herbert, or Mike Patton, to name a few.
He has also worked extensively in advertising for major brands, film, and video games like Dance Dance Revolution, Halo or Doom – this work, earned him a nomination to the Cannes Lions.
His sound effects and sample libraries are exceptionally well known: he makes the sounds that countless producers use to create their songs.Richard Devine has also done numerous sound design works for user interfaces, immersive sound, and virtual reality: in 2017 he created UI Sound Design and Ambisonic Environmental Audio for Google’s DayDream VR and Google Earth VR platforms, more on this further down. He also has experience in sound design for the automotive industry, and is specially famous for his work with modular synthesizers.

If you prefer to watch the full lecture then check it out below:

In this essential deep dive for artists, producers and audiophiles of all stripes, electronic artist and composer Richard Devine sets out the principals of modular synthesis, sound design and field recordings.

Furthermore, Devine is in demand by tech giants such as Apple, Sony and Microsoft, and he is increasingly called upon for top-secret projects developing sonic environments for everything from apps to automobiles.

His work is in the exploding field of sound design for virtual reality, which he delved into in 2015 when Google hired him to create the entire sonic realm of the company’s Daydream virtual reality platform, from designing navigation sounds to assuring consistency in virtual environments. “I basically flew out to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View and got a three-week crash course in virtual reality at their offices,” he says. “I just jumped right in from that point.”

One of Devine’s most significant projects at Google was creating or- ganic textures and sounds for the Google Earth VR app, a process that began with location recording using a Sennheiser AMBEO VR mic and Soundfield ST450 Ambisonic mic and an 8-channel Sound Devices recorder. “If you were in a forest or near a lake, you would hear sounds of water or birds and wind noise and crickets; depending on where you are in the world,” he says. “We have this library of sounds that I recorded in Ambisonics format; it plays in various locations, depending on where you are on the planet.”